


when i lean in, will you push me away?

by kwritten



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Theatre, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-23
Updated: 2015-08-23
Packaged: 2018-04-16 21:12:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4640385
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kwritten/pseuds/kwritten
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“She has the flu,” Raven looked down at the cell phone in her hand and adjusted her headset, fidgeting a bit and it’s probably <i>that</i>, those movements that made him feel boxed in, that pissed him off the most. </p><p>“She’s what?” he hissed into his headset. He could see her, standing at the very back of the stage and she looks up at him, safely hidden away from the turmoil of the moment in the lighting booth with Monty and Jasper.</p>
            </blockquote>





	when i lean in, will you push me away?

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MadQueenCersei](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MadQueenCersei/gifts).



> for the prompt: Modern theatre or college theatre AU: Bellamy is the director and Raven is the technical director for the set. Everything that can go wrong is going wrong during tech week, and everyone is freaking out and the two of them could really use a distraction, but still have to deal with saving the production. Also, they won’t talk about their one-night stand.
> 
> Hope you like it!

“She has the flu,” Raven looked down at the cell phone in her hand and adjusted her headset, fidgeting a bit and it’s probably _that_ , those movements that made him feel boxed in, that pissed him off the most. 

“She’s what?” he hissed into his headset. He could see her, standing at the very back of the stage and she looks up at him, safely hidden away from the turmoil of the moment in the lighting booth with Monty and Jasper. 

“She’s not a _what_ , Blake,” her voice was crystal clear, cutting across the empty theatre like a knife, not limiting herself to the headsets they have grown more and more dependent on in the past week, whispering words of encouragement in between notices of disaster. “Clarke is _sick_ , she has the flu. Vomiting, clammy skin, note from a doctor, all of it.”

For a moment, he appreciated the clarity of her voice. She’s not even wearing a mic, but he can _feel_ her weariness. He wanted to call out to all of his actors to watch her, small and still, on the back of the stage – the light above her flickering in and out – but her voice and expression so damn _clear_. “Why aren’t you my lead actress, Reyes?” he said softly into his headset, leaning out to try to catch a glimpse of her eyes when she hears his words. 

Raven smiled crookedly, “I wouldn’t put up with your pompous ass, that’s why.” She’s angled the headset’s mic away from her mouth, insisting on having this conversation for everyone to hear. Not that there’s anyone left, really. It’s two in the morning on a Wednesday, most of their actors are gone and the stage manager threw up her hands in annoyance about four hours back, when one of the major set-pieces fell into dust between her hands. 

It wasn’t her fault they didn’t have the budget to buy real props and ended up making a bunch of stuff out of papier-mâché… ineffectively because apparently Lexa doesn’t really know as much about papier-mâché as she professed to three weeks ago. Everything kept falling apart in their hands. That on top of the flickering lights, the leak in the roof flooding the costume department three days before, and half their cast catching a really nasty flu. Probably because despite his very clear rules about inner-cast dating, everyone seemed to be banging each other backstage. 

_Fucking theatre kids._

“You like my pompous ass, you think it’s sexy,” he whispered into the headset, grinning to himself. 

Next to him, Monty cleared his throat, “Hey boss? I’m going to crawl up on the catwalk and see what I can do about the flickering and the loose filter? But like… this time _remember_ that I’m on the same channel?”

Bellamy blushed and nodded to Monty, while down on the stage Raven pretended not to be collapsing into giggles. Raven Reyes didn’t giggle, to be fair. She smirked and maybe chortled, but giggled? Not that he had heard. 

“Can you get your sexy ass down here so we can go over what props and costumes are salvageable?” She turned towards stage right, picking up the clipboard that Lexa had left on stage when she left earlier that night, “And wake up Jasper so that someone is watching the switchboard while Monty is crawling around above us.” 

Bellamy narrowed his eyes at the boy next to him in the booth, arms folded and hoodie pulled low over his face. He flipped up the hood with a flick of his wrist and swore under his breath when he saw she was right, Jasper had totally passed out in his chair. Bellamy shook him awake and pointed to the catwalk, where Monty’s form was just barely visible. “Keep a close eye,” he said and pat the boy on the shoulder. “We’re almost done.”

“Kay boss,” Jasper muttered, picking up an energy drink from the scattered pile of cans beneath his feet and taking a long swallow. 

“Why did she call you and not _me_?” Bellamy demanded once they were face to face, dragging a hand through his hair distractedly and not at all letting his gaze travel over Raven’s bare legs in the shorts she’s insisted on wearing for all of Tech.

“Because she’s scared as hell of you, Blake,” Raven said with no sympathy in her voice at all. “She told me to break it to you gently, she didn’t want you to hurt yourself.” She rolled her eyes when she said that last part, but he’s not entirely sure whether she’s rolling her eyes at Clarke or at him. Most of the time she’s rolling her eyes at _him_ and he can’t exactly blame her. 

“I’m not going to hurt myself,” he laughed bitterly. 

Raven stepped closer and peered into his eyes, “I don’t know. You are getting a little mad scientist on me. When’s the last time you ate something?”

He blinked down at her. There was a bagel sometime in the past day, but he’s not entirely sure he finished it. Probably Monty ate it. Or Wells, the little shit. He was always eating everyone’s food. 

Raven breathed heavy through her nose, “Yeah, that’s what I thought.” She pulled out her phone, some high-tech looking thing that she got while on an internship in Japan a few months back. He’d had to do a three-week run of _Coriolanus_ without her snarky comments or lighting filters. She could make a bare black stage come to life with her lighting. The board had suggested he hire someone else for the interim, but Bellamy Blake didn’t believe that she wouldn’t be back and so Monty and Jasper had made due without her. (He had a sneaking suspicion that she was with them the whole way, guiding them via txt message and long Skype sessions, but he wasn’t yet ready to ask.)

She hadn’t moved away from him and it was so easy to lift his hand up to her shoulder, “Hey, when’s the last time you slept?”

Raven narrowed her eyes at her phone, “We have faulty wiring since that storm last week, there’s a brand-new bulb flickering for no discernable reason, the mics are sending off feedback I can’t get rid of, the lead actress _and_ understudy are both quarantined with disgusting flus, and my director can’t fucking feed himself.” She glared up at him, “I had a nap during Act Two while you lectured everyone about historical authenticity.”

“They keep saying ‘okay’ when they forget their lines!” Bellamy spluttered.

“And I got a nap,” Raven nodded, a smile lit up her eyes but never really reached her mouth. She was teasing him. She’d done that more since she got back from Japan, the trip made her more playful, easier to ease into, easier to tease back. 

He glanced around the immediate area, as far as he could tell all the actors still hanging around for instruction were in the green room trying to catch some sleep, Monty and Jasper were occupied, and he was tired. He slumped into Raven, sliding his arms around her waist and resting his head on her shoulder, “I should have just taken a nap.”

“You know,” she leaned into him slightly, just a half of a breath, but he could feel it, feel her softening beneath his skin. “They were saying ‘okay’ to you after you asked them a question. They weren’t even in character anymore.”

Bellamy chuckled, “Why aren’t you my lead actress, Reyes?” His fingers slip under the edge of her light button-up shirt and press against the warm skin of her lower back. 

“Because then I couldn’t fuck you after a long day without all the other actors on set hating me.” Raven Reyes knows this world the way he does, loves it the way he does, hates it the way he does, maybe that’s why they rarely touch _here_ , why they keep their distance, why they limit themselves to whispered words of encouragement over channels that everyone can hear. 

“Aren’t they all jealous now?” He buried his nose in the skin at her neck, breathing the scent of her sweat and the apple lotion her mother sent her for her birthday that she hates. The tendrils of hair at her neck that have escaped her ponytail are slightly damp with perspiration and there’s something so intrinsically _Raven_ to that fact, that she’s been running around this bizarrely cold theatre so much that there is proof of it lingering in her skin and changing the texture of her hair. (They needed to get the heating fixed before opening, can’t have the audience shivering in their seats.)

“Indra told me she was praying for me yesterday,” he could feel her smile against his cheek. “They’ll be jealous when this damn thing opens and you are a celebrated director again instead of a stressed out maniac yelling at them when they say ‘okay’ backstage.” She hummed a little, “Actually Murphy asked me if I couldn’t do a better job keeping you satisfied the other day. Something about you being cranky.”

Bellamy raised his head and looked down at her, “That’s why he keeps bitching that his arm hurts, you punched him didn’t you?”

Raven shrugged.

He considered leaning back into her for a moment, but then stepped away instead, letting his arms fall to his side, “So I guess…” _I guess we should talk about this…_

Raven had been technical director of the small theatre long before he showed up, armed with several fancy degrees and articles pinpointing him as the up-and-coming director to watch. She’d let him into her space with grace, all things considered. He could be a real ass when he wanted to be, or when he didn’t watch himself. Their first season together was a delicate dance, him testing out the boundaries and her staying firm, but after a couple of years working together, they had found a good balance. As long as he stayed out of her booth and she didn’t take his actors away they got along just fine. Sometime during this run, this god-awful run where everything that could possibly go wrong went wrong, things had started to shift. They stopped working around each other and started to work with each other. The difference was subtle and most of the actors didn’t notice – or so he had thought – but it was a relief. 

Okay, so their one-night-stand three days after callbacks probably helped clear the air. With anyone else a random drunken night that resulted in sex would have made things more difficult (he may or may not have previous experience in this arena), but with Raven it felt clearer, simpler. 

He still wanted to talk about it and right now was probably the worst timing ever, considering the amount of shouting and swearing that was happening above their heads right now, but…

“Should we… talk about… the thing…” he raised his eyebrows. 

“About how you need a new Ophelia?” a voice he recognized called out from the darkness behind Raven. 

“O?” Bellamy looked from Raven to his sister and back. “What the hell are you doing here?”

Octavia threw her arm around Raven’s shoulders, handing her a bulging plastic bag of what smelled like Thai take-out, “I hear you lost _two_ Ophelia’s to a stomach flu and half of your props to some bad papier-mâché. I’m here to save the day!”

Bellamy drew his sister into a hug and looked at Raven over her shoulder, mouthing _thank you_ to her. She nodded and then started issuing orders into her headset, her eyes flashing up to the catwalk worriedly. 

“… so that’s when I told Raven that I’d come down, but I’m not staying with you again oh my god. Raven offered to let Lincoln and I crash at her place, said she could bum around on couches for a while. I raided mom’s shed on the way down and got some stuff that may fill in your missing props. So where’s my Hamlet? And you should probably help Lincoln unload the car,” Octavia babbled as she took off her jacket and threw it to him. “Raven, let’s go over as much of the blocking as we can before I pass out? Been driving all day.”

Raven looked at Bellamy sideways as she followed Octavia back out onto the dark stage, “The show must go on.” Her eyes flicked to the bag she had set down on a chair, _eat you idiot_ clear on her face.

He was never, ever going to live this down. Octavia was going to bring this up at _every_ Thanksgiving and Christmas, how she saved his life by playing Ophelia for him. He shrugged and headed outside to help Lincoln unload the supplies O had brought down from their mother’s. 

The show must go on. 

 

(Lincoln fixed the heating unit and the bad wiring, Lexa found a costume shop three hours away that could fill in the gaps the flood left in their wardrobe department, Octavia was a perfect Ophelia for the first five performances and then stepped down when Clarke recovered from the flu and came back ready to perform. Lincoln and Octavia stayed in Raven’s apartment and, by their reports, cleaned and organized her kitchen for her because she was ‘a total slob’ and never threw anything out. 

Raven spent most of their stay wrapped up in one of Bellamy’s old Greek t-shirts from college, perched on the foot of his bed, arguing with him about whether waffles were indeed a breakfast food or a dessert.)

 

(Abby won the betting pool. Apparently the board had nothing better to do while the theatre was falling apart than take bets on the director’s love life.  
He suggested to Raven – not very subtly – that they should just open up their own theatre. She said this was terrible pillow talk and threw a book at his face.)


End file.
